Pupils at Gorsley Goffs Primary School took a trip back in time and ended up in a Victorian classroom for the day on Friday, 8th December. One of the classes at the school enjoyed a Victorian education as part of their 'Learning Alive' history project.

The day's work involved learning the art of copper plate handwriting, sketching, reciting and chanting tables, traditional maths and even traditional Victorian games were played during break time.

Unfortunately, several of the children did not come up to standard with their work and teachers during the Victorian period were not quite as lenient as they are today. The children who did not make the grade were given three strokes of the cane to help the lessons sink in (only pretend, of course).

In the photograph are Victorian pupils Daniel, Sophie, Georgia, Olivia, Ben, George, Molly, Charlotte and Elizabeth in the back row. In the front row are Isobella, Rebecca, Tom, Sam, Harry, Matthew and Jess.

The Dean Singers, accompanied by Emma Mason and directed by Becky Morgan spent Saturday morning singing Carols to Christmas shoppers in the Maltings to raise money for the Air Ambulance.

The Singers like to support the Air Ambulance because two years ago one of their members' life was saved by the team and so the group hold events every now and again to raise money for the worthy cause as a way of saying thank you.

If you would like to hear the Dean Singers for yourself, they are giving a concert on Monday 18th December at the Church of the Good Shepherd at Broadwell, beginning at 7:30 pm. Entrance is free to the performance, but there will be an opportunity to contribute to the collection. Mince pies and mulled wine will also be available.

In the photograph below are Mike Salmon, John Pritchard, John Buck, Ron Davies Becky Morgan, Allan Kettle and Emma Mason, performing and Lawrence Daley, Trish Salmon and Jean Kettle who were collecting donations for the Air Ambulance.

I didn't write this article. I have no idea who did but I wish it had been me:

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000/3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see above) could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not even counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second, each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Whoever did write the above article got it wrong because I saw Santa with my own eyes in the Maltings on Saturday. The kind people of The Maltings had invited him along specially to give chocolates and balloons and mince pies to local children out shopping with their parents. So there!

Ross Macmillan Cancer Support Group recently held a Christmas quiz night at the Conservative Club in Ross which raised £401 towards the new Charles Renton Unit for oncology planned for Hereford Hospital. Soosie Pinnell, the quiz mistress and the contestants dressed for the occasion and seasonal fun and fayre was enjoyed by all.

In the photograph are Christine, Peter, Gussie, (Father Christmas), Brian, Soosie, (Mother Christmas), Marion, Enid, Fay and Sandra.

Following the success of opening for drinks all day, the New Inn at St. Owen's Cross is set to enhance its reputation further. From the beginning of December, the New Inn has started to offer food all day at the pub for the very first time, making it one of the few independent pubs in Herefordshire to offer food and drink all day. More importantly, they have taken a bold step of going no smoking in January 2007, before the government date, which has been set at 1st July 2007.

Tee Maud, who oversees the catering said, 'It is something we had considered for a while and with ongoing requests for food in the afternoon, we thought starting in December would be ideal. Thinking further ahead towards the smoking ban, we also believe the impact of this will be lessened if we make the food offer stronger, increasing the menu and opening all day will do this. We are offering a full menu, with children's choices, so hopefully we will also be used for a quick meal instead of using fast food outlets.

As the food trade at the pub is expanding, we also felt that we needed to make sure that the environment was right and being totally no smoking from The New Year is the way forward. Anyway it was the regular customers who actually decided the date in a charity draw but I am sure it will be very popular.'

Are you looking for somewhere to enjoy a Christmas Meal with your family or for somewhere to hold your annual company Christmas Dinner?

Over the coming weeks, Wyenot News will be making menus from local restaurants available to view on-line or print.

Click the links below to view menus available so far in a separate window (close window when finished). Links are placed in order of when received. This article will be repeated with a different 'Winter' photo weekly until Christmas:

[White Lion Christmas Menu] * [The Bridge at Wilton Christmas Menu]

[Pengethley Manor Menu - 'Murder at the Manor' 8th December]

[The Castle Lodge Hotel] * [The Chasedale Hotel] * [Wilton Court Mulberry Restaurant]

[The Saracen's Head] * [The King's Head] * [The Prince of Wales]

[The Inn on the Wye]

If you advertise with Wyenot.com and would like your restaurant's Christmas menu available to view on-line here, please post a copy to:
Wyenot News, 1, Hillview Road, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. HR9 7EY.

This is a free service - available only to restaurants / pubs which are currently advertised on Wyenot.com!

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Ross-on-Wye 41 Tredworth 0

The top team of the table played the bottom on Saturday with Ross entertaining Tredworth who were looking for that classic sporting upset and an opportunity to ignite their season. However Ross are too professional these days and after a hard initial 30 minutes Ross cut loose, scoring seven unanswered tries as they cemented their position as league leaders.

For the initial half hour it was obvious that Tredworth had come looking for a result. They were ferocious around the ruck area, had the nudge on Ross at the scrummage and had restricted Ross to an excellent individual try by Gavin Oates converted by Chris Gage. The Ross forwards had worked hard with ball in hand and both Nick Rawlings and Matthew Redman drove hard at the Tredworth defence. Matt Jones, Paul Hayward and Wayne Williams hit their rucks and slowly they began to wear down what for the first 30 minutes had been a stubborn Tredworth defence. The platform that the Ross pack had laid down in the initial 30 minutes paid dividends for the Ross three-quarters during a purple patch 10 minutes either side of half-time.

As Ross ran in another six well worked tries, with the Tredworth defence tiring, Ross no.10 Chay Brine began to dominate the game. His pace tore the Tredworth defence to shreds and culminated in an excellent individual effort beating four defenders to score under the posts. Simon Gwynne, Alistair Rees and Huw Bellamy got themselves on the score sheet after some quality interplay between the three-quarters. Not to be outdone, the Ross pack joined in on the act with a good old fashioned forwards try. Richard Russell took a clean lineout ball ten yards out from the line, the pack set up a driving maul and Matt Redman crashed over to score. With the game sixty minutes old Ross were already 41-0 to the good and with fading light, the referee call a halt to proceedings in the interests of player safety.

The "Charlie's Bar" Ross man of the match was Gavin Oates for his tireless efforts at the breakdown. Ross RFC would also like to thank John Kyrle High School for the use of their pitch and facilities. Ross take a well earned break from league action over Christmas with their next league encounter being at home against Tetbury on January 6th 2007.

Ross-on-Wye Weather Station is located by the tennis courts and bowling green at 'Crossfields' and is one of the important stations around the country which regularly sends data to the Meteorological Office. This is why Ross-on-Wye is sometimes mentioned on the BBC weather reports. It is currently still a manually monitored station and readings are taken twice per day by husband and wife team, June and Rex Swallow.

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